The man beside her shakes his head and mutters something under his breath. He arches his back, wincing. Since the crash, she has been numb, wrapped in the soft padding of shock. But now she realises that her own body is beginning to ache. Something clatters in the boot and it sounds like the bullets coming through the metal roof of Apostoli’s car. Then it all comes back: the howl of the tyres, the abrupt silence as the wheels left the road and they were all weightless for a moment, rolling through air. Zoë presses her forehead against the cool metal of the roof struts. When she closes her eyes she sees Vangeli’s ruined body. And the English voices – the men in front are arguing about something – are like long fingernails digging into her, finding much older scars, opening them up one by one. She doesn’t want any of the memories, but still they come. Twisted against the roof struts, breathing in the scent of warm oil, they come.

She feels a gentle tap on her arm. Biting her lip, she turns enough to see a crumpled red and yellow pack of cigarettes held in long, oil-stained fingers. The hand shakes the pack so that a cigarette, bent and creased, rises clear of the foil. She takes it, not looking at the officer, trying not to snatch, trying to keep her own hand from shaking. A box of matches appears – England’s Glory, she reads – and she manages to strike one behind cupped fingers. The cigarette tastes strange: thin and acrid. But she inhales greedily. She hears the officer light his own and feels him turn towards her again.

‘Does it hurt?’ His voice is polite and careful. She stares at the grass drifting by at the side of the road. She shrugs curtly, knowing she is being insufferably rude, that it isn’t fair of her, that these men have helped her, saved her, maybe … ‘You’ve had a bad time,’ he is saying. ‘Those bruises on your legs look nasty.’ Reflexively, she jerks her knees towards the door and finds that, yes, they hurt.

‘I am all right,’ she says, not looking at him. She feels ill and full of guilty rage, guilty because she can tell that the man beside her is trying to be kind even though he is exhausted. He is talking to her partly to keep himself awake, she understands, and a little quiver of sympathy rises through her angry nausea. She shrugs again, face still turned away. She can feel him, too near. His hip is an inch away from hers. Her sympathy evaporates. Everything is too near. What would happen if she simply stood up and jumped into the smudged air beyond the car? But she’s too tired to do that. She breathes out smoke, which vanishes into the dust cloud behind them.

‘And – I’m sorry to be so curious – where did you learn such good English?’